Cork players pushed to the brink

The management team exposed the board’s madness by refusing to offer an easy way out

From the very beginning it was clear nobody had seen anything like this before. People tried to make a link to the battles waged in 2002 between the Cork players and their county board, but back then black was black and white was white. Positions were polarised and the lines were clearly defined, right and wrong visibly clear. The players threatened strike action, but solutions to their welfare issues were found, and nuclear action was comfortably averted. This time the players were pushed to the brink, and the mushroom cloud it created almost enveloped the entire country.

Before last week's conclusion, the balance of opinion had swung like a pendulum for months. While the stand-off essentially concerned the board's decision to remove the right of the senior inter-county managers to choose their own selectors, there were other strands to the argument. Clubs in Cork were feeling isolated by the constant